Исследовательская работа "Экзамены- стресс или повторение полученных знаний?"
творческая работа учащихся по английскому языку (10 класс) по теме

Министерство науки и образования Российской Федерации

Муниципальное бюджетное общеобразовательное учреждение «Гимназия» №1

Report

Theme: “Exams: disastrous stress or an opportunity to check knowledge”

By: student of 10th grade Velichkina Anastasia

Teacher: Semenchonok Elena Vladimirovna

Content:

1. Introduction

1. Actualization.
2. Why I have chosen this theme.

2. Main part

1. Psychologists opinion

1. Stress anxiety
2. Examination stress

2. My own researches

1. Do you feel worried before the examination?
2. How much time do you spend on preparing?
3. Do you feel stress during the exam?
4. How can you describe your condition after the examination?
5. Have you ever failed examination because of worries?
6. Have you ever thought that you will fail state exams?
7. Can you invite alternatives?

3. Alternatives to examination and meaning of state exams in Russia

3. Conclusion

1. Introduction

1. Actualization.

        For all of the modern students exams are the most important problem, because they are a serious test for schoolchildren, because their relationship with parents and future career depend on them. And what do people think about exams? Some say that it is a huge stress, and it is very harmful for nervous system, that exams are unfair or too hard to prepare.  Some think that this is one of the best solutions in educational system, because exams give students equal opportunities to enter the University.

2. Why I have chosen this theme.

I have chosen this theme, because I want to find truth about exams. I`d like to understand if they are a kind of disastrous stress or just an opportunity to check knowledge.  And I want to show you the results of research to calm you down or to prevent you about the future stress.

2. Main part

3. Psychologists opinion

   At first I`ve tried to check psychologist`s opinion. First attempts to fully understand people`s condition during the exams were done in XX century by Lazarus. He first tried to imagine stress as a cope of different external and interior demonstrations. That gave opportunity to understand, that stress is more than just a checking knowledge, that`s a form of a stressful situation for a person. Nowadays psychologists allocate test (or stress) anxiety and examination stress.

8. Stress anxiety

    What is the stress anxiety? The test anxiety construct is considered as a situation-specific trait accounting for individual differences in the extent to which people find examinations threatening (Spielberger & Vagg, 1995). Within this general conceptualisation there are broad and narrow definitions. Narrow definitions focus on fear of failure (emphasising how performance is judged), or evaluation anxiety (emphasising how test anxiety can be located with other, so called, subclinical anxieties including sports performance, public speaking, and so forth). These emphasise a social dimension where the performance is judged by others.

9. Examination stress

  Now we should look closer at examination stress and its affection on pupils, passing the exam. While you are feeling stressed, your brain is not in its best state to accumulate information. This can lead to a vicious cycle – the more you stress, the less work you do, the more you panic about stressing and not working and the higher the feeling of panic becomes, resulting in even less work being done – and so it goes on. Examination stress has several symptoms and it can manifest itself in different ways depending on the individual and the type of exam they are preparing for. The most common symptoms include:

• A feeling of despair, anxiety or worry;
• A feeling that you will never be able to get  enough time or prepare well for  the exam;
• An inability to concentrate or to think clearly;
• An inability to sleep because your mind is racing
• An inability to relax because you feel guilty that you are not working
• Migraines or headaches
• Prolonged tiredness
• Increased heart rate or a feeling of panic, perhaps even leading to a panic attack.

Experiencing panic or stress during an exam can make you forget the information you learned. This is the least that can likely to happen .

4. My own researches

      So, as we can see, most f psychologists say that exam stress is disastrous and can cause bad exam results. And I have done my own research and I`m going to show you the results in order to prove or refute psychologists opinion.

  I have asked 45 teenagers from my school from 8-11forms. The first question I asked was: Do you feel stress before the exam? Below you can see a diagram, which shows the result of my interview. So, more than 55% of students said that they felt minor stress, 1/3 said that they felt strong stress and only 11% said that they did not feel any worries. So, as we can see most of the students do not feel strong stress before the exam. Let`s go further and look at the other questions.

 The second question was: “How long do you prepare for the exam.” As we can see from the slide, most of students prefer preparing forehand, that means that they feel stress during cramming for a period of time, but that also means they are better prepared and feel less stress during the exam.

 So, the next question was: “Do you feel stress during the exam?” To my own surprise, I found out that almost 50% feel just minor stress and 15% do not worry at all. So, most of the students do not feel real discomfort during the examination. So now we can see some difference between what I ha ve just said some minutes before and the results of my survey to find out the truth.

 The next question was: “What do you feel after the exam?” As we can, most of children do not feel negative emotions, they feel relief. Of course, they are worried because of the results, but these students compile only 1/5. That does not really coincide with psychologists` opinions.

 So, to clarify everything I have asked another question: “Have you ever failed exams because of worries?” Most of the interviewed said that they have never failed because of examination stress or they rare fail because of it.

 Then I wanted to understand how strong preexamitation worries could be. That is why my next question was: “Do you think, that you will fail state exam?” According to my researches, most of students believe they pass the exam without  any difficulties. I can assume, that these results mean students do not really have strong anxiety about coming state exams.

  I assumed, that students do not worry, because they write off during the examination, so I asked them about it. But none of interviewed said that he wrote of. That means, that students are sure, they will pass finals, and they do not have strong worries about the results as it is used to thought.

  To be sure that the results of my survey are right, I have compared them with the examinations marks of the previous school year in our school.

5. Alternatives to examination and meaning of state exams in Russia

 But anyway I can often hear from my friends and classmates that they do not like the ordinal examination. That is why I tried to found out what people think about alternative form of examinations. But mostly everyone I have asked said that he does not have any ideas, or he likes things as they are. But there were some ideas about it. People, who are disagree with modern form of examination, said that they prefer oral interviews. But can you imagine, that all students have to be interviewed and how can we believe, that examination’s marks would be fair.

3. Conclusion

  In Russia students pass state exams, which have their own advantages and disadvantages. For example, state exam`s system is unusual for students and teachers both, so teachers have to spend time on working with blanks instead of studies. Another argument against state exams is that students of different profile pass the same exams, like: students from science schools have to pass the same exam of Russian language as students from art schools have to pass.

  All in all, after analyzing the material I have found out I that nowadays the form of final exams has no variants. There are some disadvantages but they are being minimized all the time. Moreover, state exams give equal opportunities to everyone and help to fight with corruption.